Heating & Cooling

The Sun Angle Calculator is a handy tool that provides a relatively simple method of determining solar geometry variables for architectural design, such as designing shading devices or locating the position of the sun relative to a particular latitude and time.

Pilkington Glass has kindly granted permission to SBSE to reproduce and distribute the Pilkington Sun Angle Calculator. This is a fantastic graphical design and analysis tool beloved by thousands of architects and engineers. Information on ordering copies of the Sun Angle Calculator and accessing the online manual "Designing with the Pilkington Sun Angle Calculator" will be found on the

The SBSE version of the Malcolm Wells Environmental Checklist is available in multiple languages.

A Regeneration-Based Checklist for Design and Construction

If you would like to volunteer to translate the checklist into another language, download the original Excel version. Please send the translated version to Bruce Haglund for posting. Please have at least one other person check your translation to ensure accuracy.

The Carbon Neutral Design Project is a joint effort between members of SBSE, the AIA, and a private donor to provide practitioners, faculty, and students with the means to meet the 2030 Challenge.

The Carbon Neutral Design Project is a joint research effort between members of the Society of Building Science Educators (www.sbse.org), the American Institute of Architects (www.aia.org), and a private donor, the purpose of which is to provide practitioners, faculty, and students with the means to meet the 2030 Challenge (www.architecture2030.org), that is, to be able to design and construct buildings to a state of carbon neutrality by the year 2030.

The collective objective of this coalition of courses is to develop and submit highly-competitive Race to Zero projects.

Course Content: The Ball State University Department of Architecture has enrolled four teams in the 2017 Race to Zero student design competition sponsored by the US Department of Energy. These teams will look at the four building typologies established for the contest: Suburban Single-Family; Urban Single-Family; Attached Housing; and Small Multifamily. Prof. Tom Collins' section of ARCH 501 will take the lead in developing the architectural solutions that will be entered into the competition.